Icons kind of suck when you can just use text which is smaller and more descriptive. This is definitely an improvement over using webfonts for custom icons though.
Delivering Octicons with SVG
11–16 of 16 posts
Re: Delivering Octicons with SVG
#12Curious if they have any fallback for the very few browsers that can't render inline svg.
SVG support is nearly universal now: http://caniuse.com/#feat=svg -- plus, the icons aren't necessary for the UI to function, so perhaps they've forgone the fallback.
I wonder, do more people use an old browser or disable web fonts? <IE8 could be a lot of people.
Re: Delivering Octicons with SVG
#13Re: Delivering Octicons with SVG
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
SVG support is nearly universal now: http://caniuse.com/#feat=svg -- plus, the icons aren't necessary for the UI to function, so perhaps they've forgone the fallback.
For example, the blind?
Well, in Github's case the icons always seem to accompany a label, which would already make the content accessible. SVG also provides descriptions and titles that can be read out by screenreaders. Icon fonts are 'hacked' in specific unicode characters and often screenreaders try to read these characters, leading to nonsense.
But to specifically enter the question: They hide the icons. The aria-hidden attribute makes sure that the icon is not seen by screenreaders [1].
[1] http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/201205/hiding_visible_...
Re: Delivering Octicons with SVG
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
SVG support is nearly universal now: http://caniuse.com/#feat=svg -- plus, the icons aren't necessary for the UI to function, so perhaps they've forgone the fallback.
I wonder, do more people use an old browser or disable web fonts? <IE8 could be a lot of people.
My content blocker disables them on my iPad
Re: Delivering Octicons with SVG
#16> We can animate them
> We’re not saying we should, but we could, though SVG animation does have some practical applications—preloader animations, for example.
FYI SVG animation is deprecated in Chrome 45 and later. You'll want to use CSS animation instead.
See https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/SVG/SVG_animati...
Main thing is now you can't animate SVG in 'before' or 'after' pseudoelements.